Bobby on National Television

Bobby's mother got off the phone, "I just talked to my friend down at the television station and I told him about your plane in the stadium and he wants to come over to talk to you about how it felt to see your plane on TV”, she told Bobby. Bobby was sitting at the kitchen table reading the morning newspaper, actually, he was looking at his picture, HIM, flying through the air on a hang glider opening the airshow, in color!  Bobby looked at his mother and let loose with an astonished, "Wowwwwwwww, the paper in the morning and the television at night, I'll be famous!"  "Bobby, how did you make your paper airplane fly that far?", Anne seriously inquired.  Bobby shrugged his shoulders as he said "I don't know.  It was kinda strange.  The plane seemed to fly itself.  Normally when you throw it, it just flies the same pattern until you change the flight settings.  This time it did a lot of different things that require different flight settings."  Anne was listening intently and after pausing for a thought, commented, "maybe Dave from the airshow would know what would cause your plane to fly like that, want me to call him?"  Bobby thought that was an excellent idea so Anne went to her bedroom and made the call.

          The reporter arrived at 3:00 P. M., in time for the evening news.  He was in the middle of the who, what, where, why, and when questions when there was a knock at the door.  Anne moved quickly to the door and let Dave in.  Bobby was surprised to see Dave and started to excitedly tell of his flight.  The reporter luckily knew shorthand yet barely kept up with Bobby.

          After the end of Bobby's story and a couple of reporter questions it fell silent and everyone looked to Dave, the expert, for an explanation.  "I saw the game, I saw the close-up of the paper airplane, and I know what happened."  Dave was speaking directly at the camera then turned to Bobby, "that was a wonderful flight but I don't think you can take all the credit for it, there were some ants flying your paper airplane."  The silence in the room was interrupted by the reporters chuckle.  Dave turned to the reporter and told him that if he felt it was so funny then he should go review the video tape before he made an absolute fool of himself.  The reporter put on a different face and got down to some serious questions.  "How do those ants steer the plane?"  Dave told him about how shifting your weight side to side and back and forth would be all that's necessary to control flight and that if the video tape were analyzed we would see the ants moving all over the plane going where they wanted to go.  The reporter knew he was on to a story and asked, "do you think there will be other spottings  of that plane?"  "I know there will be."  Dave responded as a matter of factly.  "And", he continued, "I am prepared, with Bobby's help, to go retrieve that paper airplane while in flight."  Anne wasn't as surprised as Bobby, she had talked to Dave earlier and knew that they both would soon be starting an adventure like no other.  They all would be driving cross-country after the paper airplane.  When they located it she was to drive the tow unit and launch Bobby and Dave Tandem and they would fly after the PPP-1 and catch at.  Bobby looked to Anne to see if it would be ok to go but he sensed what had happened and just started to hoot&holler!  Dave told the reporter that this story needed to go out nation wide.  The more people looking for the plane, the better chance catching it.  The reporter was already going for the phone to hold the number one slot on the news.  Soon, after a few more questions Dave, Bobby and Anne were alone.  "I'm ready" piped Anne.  Bobby suddenly felt overloaded and rushed.  He had to pack, call his friends, feed his fish, write a note to his dad and about a billion other things.  Anne laughed, seeing Bobby's confused,-what do I do now look, said "let's go, I've packed  for you already."  Out the door, in the truck and down the road, they were on the way.

          Dave, Anne and Bobby watched themselves on the news that night from a motel room 150 miles south of where the PPP-1 was seen last.  They laughed at how they looked on TV and watched in silent astonishment has the TV screen zoomed in on the PPP-1 flying at the baseball stadium.  Ten large picnic ants were running all over the PPP-1 and performed some beautiful aerobatic routines.  Another camera angle just located showed the ants utilizing teamwork to load a piece of hot dog onto the plane.  Dave said that he felt the ants would have re-launched the plane themselves if that one kid hadn't gotten there first.  The camera followed the plane right out of the stadium until it finely disappeared.  The lights went out, the Chase was on, and Bobby couldn't sleep!